Pokemon Sheets

one of my best decisions was to stay at a hostel while in tucson. i admit that i was a little bit concerned, since the last time i stayed at a hostel in hawaii -- ironically named "hedonesia" -- i contracted a tropical disease. the time before that, all of my luggage got stolen. however, even though my motivation was to find a cheap place to sleep and change my clothes, and to spend all other moments of the day running around doing things ... i love it here at the roadrunner hostel.

1. i get to sleep on the top bunk ! and name me one major hotel chain where the top sheet doesn't match the bottom sheet doesn't match the pillowcase. or where you get to snuggle up to your favorite pokemons after a long hard day in the sun. this morning i brushed my teeth in the kitchen sink while listening to the life story of an australian pirate. its just like being at home!

2. waffles. a waffle breakfast is served every morning at 7 AM, which provides extra incentive to get up early to start your day. miraculously, almost everyone is up by 730 and in the kitchen. this morning i ate with 4 australians who had only heard of waffles, never actually experienced them. i did not think i'd be spending my vacation teaching someone how to make a waffle or discussing the uncontrollable urge to fill up every hole of the waffle with the same level of syrup and cut it into neat little boxes while youre eating it. FYI -- i have never cut a waffle diagonally.

3. as a solo traveller, its nice to have company. some of the other guests are travellers, just staying a few nights like me, and from all over the world. then there are the handful of people -- young and old -- who live here for weeks or months at a time. (i decided that i could not do this, not because i would need personal space, but because i could not decrease my beauty product collection to a manageable size to be stored/schlepped around while maintaining my current level of hygeine. this revelation is slightly amusing in itself since i pretty much always look like crap anyway.) i'm sad to be leaving my bunkmate helen, a 40 year old CPA who relocated to tucson 6 weeks ago after leaving her husband in michigan. she's here while apartment hunting. angie will be here until at least october while she finishes her anthropology degree at U of A. she sleeps with a harp on her bed. beau moved in after his motorcycle got stolen and he needed to be closer to downtown. he works at a scrap metal yard while waiting for his career as a freelance journalist to take off. side note: he looks like a scalliwag and could easily replace johnny depp as capt. jack sparrow. then there's dick, the token dirty old man ... i have no idea what his story is (im afraid to ask and get sucked into a 3-hour dissertation) or what he does during the day, but he talks to his cat and salutes me everytime he sees me and knows where all the good ice cream shoppes (pronounced shop-eez) are and reminds me to be safe. these people are not sissies.

this place is definitely superior to a sterile hotel room, even if it does take me 10 minutes to climb awkwardly out of my bunk in the middle of the night to pee. 100 times.